All Scholars

Authoritarian, meticulous, painstaking to the point of fussiness, extremely conscientious and energetic, as original and personal in his opinions and judgments as he was demanding of himself and difficult to please, Jean Lechevalier made it a point of honor to see anything he undertook to a proper conclusion, and clung tenaciously to his point of view when the defense of classical studies was at stake. A born teacher, he greatly preferred teaching to research and the publication of books. A grammarian and lexicographer by taste and natural inclination, and enamored of classical Latin, he loved most of all the explication of prose and poetic texts, and translation well done, finished, and polished bright as steel. He wrote little—which is a pity, for he wrote very well, as his reviews demonstrate. He collaborated in the revision of the Dictionnaire illustré français-latin of Felix Gaffiot. His public lectures (for example, on Roman art at the École des Beaux-Arts, and on Napoleon, the 1914-18 war, and Germany at the Institut canadien, the weekly seminars of the Societe de g6ographie and the Association canadienne-française pour l'avancement des sciences) certainly did not fail to make an impression and have remained vivid in the memory of all. He spoke admirably well; his language was as correct and pure as that of the classics, and it was an enchantment to hear him.